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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

OnePlus One gets kicked out of India, deal between Micromax and Cyanogen is the culprit

India is not the place to be right now if you want to sell a smartphone. Not only have Xiaomi handsets been banned from the country — even though they’ve been given a temporary reprieve — but now India is taking an equally hard stance against the OnePlus One, as reported by Medianama.

As requested by local manufacturer Micromax, a New Delhi court banned OnePlus from selling its handset anywhere in the country. The reasoning behind this ban can be traced back to Micromax’s exclusive deal with Cyanogen, which stipulates that no other company, including OnePlus, can sell Cyanogen-powered handsets in India.

The ban won’t take effect until after OnePlus clears out its current stock of Cyanogen-powered One smartphones, which are currently available through the company’s exclusive retail channel in India and Amazon.

“In accordance with a judgment passed by the Delhi High Court, we will no longer be producing the OnePlus One with CyanogenMod to be sold in India,” said OnePlus in a written statement. “We are still fully committed to serving our users in the region and, in light of this decision, are working to find a solution that will allow us to continue operations as soon as possible. We regret the inconvenience this causes to OnePlus fans in India who have patiently waited for the opportunity to purchase the One.”

Keep in mind that OnePlus recently announced the development of its own in-house custom ROM for future OnePlus handsets, so perhaps we’ll see them sold in India. In addition, there is a variant of the One that runs Oppo’s Color OS on top of Android. Unfortunately, OnePlus’ plan to sell this variant of the One in India has yet to be confirmed, so stay tuned.